


Gifts of the Morning

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Ladyhawke (1985)
Genre: F/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 19:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14677605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: Etienne and Isabeau spend three years wandering before they come back to confront the Bishop.  That's a lot of sunsets - and a lot of mornings.





	Gifts of the Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).



> This story is for my beta, and was inspired by a comment she made once about the etymology of 'morganatic marriages' made between a noble and a commoner. They were named after the morning gift, a portion bestowed by the husband onto the bride for her maintenance, because no other inheritance applied. And I thought it made a good name for a story.

In the early days – the early nights – Etienne was too wild to understand what was happening, or even to know himself.  All his memories were a blur but for one dreadful sunset when a white robed bishop kicked him away from his love like a dog. For a long time, all he knew was hunger and cold, and the desperate need to survive; he scrabbled in the cold earth until his fingers bled finding food to eat, and ripped into the rabbits and deer that his _other_ self left for him.  And the going down of the sun which, naked, he feared.

Until one morning he came to himself a little.  He was lying in a dugout hollow with furs piled over him, staring at a solitary white snowdrop, the first shy gift of spring.  As he lay there, the scene slowly began to make sense, and he was able, piece by suffering piece, to put away the urgent needs of his wolf-self.  A fire, but not to be fled, and smoke that was a comfort not a threat.  A whinny and a toss of horse head, and a black shadow that was not _food_ but companion.  Another horse, with the pure lines of the Friesian breed he valued so much.  He blinked.  _His_ horse.  Goliath.  There was clinking and the rattle of tack and…

“You’re awake now.  Good.”  His man-at-arms handed him a plate.  He had a man-at-arms…  He was a captain, a man of honour…  “Francesco,” he said suddenly, and sat up, fighting the headache the transformation gave him, before he tore into the plate of cooked food. 

Francesco gave him a bundle: a tunic and some trews.  “There was a rumour,” he said, “of a wild man in the woods.  I thought it might be you.”  Navarre looked at the small camp – not just his horse but his armour and family sword, the double crossbow he’d spent six months’ wages on, all the trappings of a man.  “I’m sorry,” Francesco went on gruffly.  “Your lady…  I am sorry, I had thought she was dead.  I’ll bring a dress next time.” 

Etienne felt blood drain from his face.  He was alone in this curse.  He _must_ be.  Above him he heard the harsh shriek of the hawk which had been sharing his little patch of wood.  Without thinking he held up his bare arm to let her rest - he’d grown used to the sharp scratch of her talons in his loneliness.  She ruffled her feathers and chuffled slightly, and he smiled slightly at the friend he’d made.

The man-at-arms nodded awkwardly at the hawk.  “My Lady.”

In the absence of breath, one might yet live.  Etienne closed his eyes and marshalled his thoughts, ruthlessly shoving the needs of wolf-self away.  He had Isabeau to care for.

***

Etienne went north, as far and fast as he might.  He needed to regroup, recuperate, make a plan…  His Isabeau needed a warm place to sleep and a safe space to walk under the moon, away from the roaming patrols that no longer answered to him.  He tried not to think of himself as running away with his tail between his legs.

***

There was a morning when snow still lay on the ground and daffodils stood proudly in the meadows and he woke to the smell of blood, and the wolf sprang up in him, snarling.  In the fire Isabeau had lit for him, there were cinders of soft bark soaked red.  Four more nights he woke to blood, the wolf in him and the man in him hunting for threat before a crude joke from his soldier days came to mind, painfully; the trammels of logic still coming hard.  In the slums of Milan, he paid a whore to have an hour’s frank conversation: she laughed heartily and gave him a kiss on the cheek as lagniappe.  Next month, he was prepared.

***

The coins Francesco had left for him dwindled soon enough, and reluctantly Etienne found a condottiere to sign on with.  Contracting warfare sat ill with him, but then he knew his family to be knights barely in name – his father’s father had been a bruiser sent to the Crusades to make good.  And it was work he was good at.  Much of the contracted soldier’s life was manoeuvring and cutting off supply trains, with a lot of posturing to impress the paying client.  He got a reputation for cunning and viciousness and solitude. 

He was the running joke of the company for always taking the time to trot away from the camp to his own private quarters, to bathe in whatever river or pond he could find, to guard well his privacy.  But an army camp was no place for a gently bred young woman, and that was that.  After their first standing battle the jokes stopped and he became Navarre the Wolf, who shed his injuries like so much sloughed fur.  There was no one to tell that the nightly change which wracked him left his body made new with each bitter bright morning, so he just grinned with pale eyes, and let the rumours spread.

After his first pay, he found a pedlar and paid for a mirror, small and round and silvered as the moon and left it tucked inside Isabeau’s dress as a gift.  In the morning, he found a clay bowl filled with daisies, still quite closed against the early dawn, and a bar of soap, and a razor.  He smiled ruefully and took the time to scrape his bristles off.  There had been a stolen morning, long ago, when they had ridden out into the fields and settled into the tall grasses and made crowns of day’s eyes and she had touched his face gently, learning the bone and flesh of him, rubbing the soft skin of her thumb gently against the grain of stubble and laughing at how smoothly he had shaved his cheeks.  He had bragged that he would keep doing so for her, his lady, one small service, and she had kissed his fingers and taken his oath, that small secret smile on her face below a crown of daisies.  It was such a little thing he could do.

Once, he got lucky, and captured a rival condottiere in battle.  The ransom was a glory of coins and mercenaries slinking away from the town they had been paid to defend.  His own captain clapped him on the back and offered to sell him a partnership, but he shook his head and rode away with his blood money.  An army camp was no place for a gently reared young woman.  And the smell of blood warm and rank in his nostrils kept his wolf-self near, fighting for the rule of the man.  So that was that.

***

Etienne took them north, and north again, until he walked his horse along the great river Seine and into the jumbled buildings that were the University that fool Imperius had told him of in his drunken rambling confession.  Here, away from the corruption of Rome, he wondered perhaps if he might find a theologian who could stand between his love and the Gates of Hell.

The tonsures of the students made him twitch and seek to rip out throats, the wolf in him anxious to be hemmed in so.  The students eyed him and turned away, holding their robes to them as prissily as maidens spying mice.  His Isabeau would have laughed at them.  Instead, the hawk settled on his shoulder and ruffled her feathers, and cawed at them.  At the Collège de Navarre he found his own countrymen, who fluttered away to their books and left him to the mercy of the college rector, an old old man who had to be reminded that the one he spoke to knew no Latin.  The Docteur hemmed and hawed and brought colleagues in to consult.

“You have the right of it, young man,” Docteur Antonius told him a couple of weeks later.  In the early morning, the barge they rode creaked and swayed; Goliath snorted at a slight breeze and shuffled his hooves; Isabeau, hooded, chirped at the horse.  Etienne… did not _quite_ remember waking, in the oak wood surrounding a chapel known for its miracles; the Notre Dame de Boulogne, Antonius called it.  Little bundles of yarrow flowers had spotted themselves amongst the roots of the oak tree that cradled him and his eyes focused slowly on the starry flowers.  He had breathed in the sweet medicinal scent until he could stand to look at the little scholar in heavy academic robes who sat cross legged on the ground.  The Docteur had tossed him a bundle of clothes and watched with birdlike interest as he stiffly dressed, then gestured to him to come quickly.

“I see you trying in these early mornings to break through the fog of the animal, the fog of war.  It is a right instinct.”  The bargeman looked up with interest, then away at the doctor’s disapproving glare.

“Alas, young Navarre, I would that you and your lady might stay longer, for the separation of the soul from the body fascinates me, and were I but forty years younger I might stand you some competition for your gentle lady – ah,” he added, wagging a finger, “I was not always as dried up as you see me.  But no, it cannot be.  Our rival colleges are spreading rumours that we are practicing black sorcery and hosting scarlet women, faithless _imbéciles_ ,” he spat, “they seek no truth, but _dogma._ But alas the sanctuary we might grant you is at an end.  Always together, forever apart,” he held a small gobbet of dried meat to the young hawk, “as dreadful a story as the _nominatissima_ Héloïse and her poor canon…”

He clapped Etienne on the shoulder and helped the soldier mount his horse as the barge reached the shore with a thunk.

“Say your prayers, if you can bear to; calculate the trajectory of your arrow in flight; and here,” the Docteur handed Navarre a small bound book, “the first mathematics.  A treatise by the great Pythagoras.  When you can learn geometry in your head, work out how to calculate areas, how to bisect angles, to draw a perfect circle – try that.  That should keep the wolf from your door a little.”

He slapped Goliath hard on the flank and Navarre spurred his horse into a gallop.  “Now away!  Before the Constable of Paris comes for you!”

***

South-west, then.  A little south and a little west, to where Isabeau might still have some people.  In Anjou, her family were _gone_ , lost after the Crusades and plague and the war with Britain.  So he went west into the setting sun, until he found a rocky seashore and the wind blew cold into his lungs and a ruined watchtower that would give shelter for the night.

At the going down of the sun, he drew out a proposition in the sand, a circle inside a square, before the primal howl took him.  When he came to himself in the morning, lips cracked and mouth tasting of salt, seagulls screaming overhead and one hawk higher in the lofty clouds, he found his proposition: now a man standing spread-eagled inside it.

They stayed in Brittany for two seasons, hunkering down as the winter storms battered the little watchtower.  During the day, Etienne practiced his swordsmanship against shadows on the salt shore, chopped wood, and rode Goliath to the huddle of huts that passed for the nearest village to procure food.  It charmed him to speak with a gentleman’s grace to the unbathed peasants who dwelt there.  They ran, or hid, or shoved the bravest of their number out towards him to dicker for silver pennies.  He would bow from his saddle at the tangle haired wench who filled Goliath’s saddle bags, and his horse would snort and stamp, and the girl would squeal and flee; all parties satisfied by the transaction.  He would ride home through the long lines of standing stones, wondering how they might appear in the queer shadows of the moon’s light.

One morning, in the early spring, when the flowers the locals called ‘dragon’s-teeth’ clustered in yellow mounds around the tower’s base, he climbed his tower and flung the hawk high into the vasty air, peering out at the rough seas.  He squinted into the westering wind – tiny specks on the horizon, dark ships too big for fisher craft, and bearing the red cross of St George on their sails.  He raised his arm and cried out: “Hawk!”

Other men’s wars had found them.  It was time to go.

***

In Aquitaine they met disaster.

He had made an error, some mistake; it didn’t matter what. 

In a village called St-Martin the peasants told stories of witches, women who changed themselves into hares or owls to run under the moon.  If you cut off the hare’s foot, they said, and looked the next day for the old hag that limped, you would know the witch.  Or young, another jested, a young harlot who would seduce you and suck out your soul.  _What woman would waste her breath on you?_ a part of him wanted to ask, and another to snarl and tear out the churl’s throat, but he merely grunted and took his leave of the inn where he was taking some food and ale.

Someone must have told the Inquisition; some rumour must have spread – it didn’t matter.  Three days later, he met a monk on the road.

“Can you point the way for a humble man of God?”  The monk was old, wizened, and clad in the black and white robes of a Dominican friar.  In the half light of the yew wood, rain dripping from the green poison leaves, Navarre was more interested in finding a sheltered clearing in which to camp, but he pulled up Goliath and answered the monk all the same.

“I am a stranger in these parts,” Navarre answered.  “There was a village some miles down the road.  You could ask one who dwells there.”

“Many thanks,” the monk bowed.  “And do you say your prayers, O Knight, chance met on the road?”  There was an unpleasantness in the lilt of the man of God’s voice.

“God turned his face from me years ago,” Navarre said harshly.  “He can shift for himself.”

“Excellent,” a wicked smile gleamed from beneath the cowl.  “It is always a good day to arrest another heretic.

From the glooming trees around him, soldiers leapt through the twisted branches.  He turned and struck, downed those he could, lunged snarling for the white throat of the friar.  The change came early, and he knew no more.

When Etienne came to himself he was chained in a room high and far from the earth.  He could hear the chanting of religiouses, and knew in that sombre chant that he was far from heaven.

The dried up monk stood before him, his hands tucked beneath the black cape he wore, his eyes speculative.

“Give me my clothes,” Etienne growled.

“You are detained,” the monk said, “on charges of heresy and of witchcraft.  You will be investigated by myself, Friar Guillem of the Dominican Order, on behalf of the Cardinal of Angoulême, and then you will be put down as the abomination you are.”

“God damn you, I have a soul.”

“And in what wise can an animal have a soul?  They are not persons.  Else it would be unjust to kill and eat them.”  The monk cocked his head.

“I am no animal.  Give me my clothes.”

The monk opened a chest and investigated the contents.  He pawed through the black gambeson, and the red and scarlet cloak Navarre had affected.  Then the broad sword, with the jewels of his father and grandfather.

“That sword holds the honour of my family,” Navarre insisted.  “I stand before you a man.”

“You are a sinner and a heretic.  The Church in her holy wisdom has rights over your body.  You must be put to the question to determine the peculiarities of how you exist in God’s universe.”

“I am cursed,” Navarre said bitterly.  “No sinner, I.”

When the monk left him, there was nought for him to do but strain at his chains and try to make the window.  As the sun sank blood red down to hell, his fingers grasped the bars and he hauled himself up to the light.  He could see Isabeau in flight, flinging herself against the high tower, and he shook his head in despair.

“ _Hawk_ ,” Etienne whispered.  “No, my love, you must go from here.  _Leave me._ ”

The hawk screamed, and he knew no more.

***

A wolf stood on four legs gazing at a pool.  The black head snarled, the pale head growled; the water rippled, sped away from the droplets of sweat, of drool falling from him.  He raised his head, _howled,_ and brought the squared circle to him.  Etienne leaned forward panting, brought his pale head close to the water, his face and hair blanched in the moving water, then cupped his hand to drink.  He would not drink like a dog.  He breathed in shuddering gasps, naked to the air in the hidden wood.  Propositions came painfully to him – triangles and cosines and hypotenuses, but he found the man in him again, recognised his beloved horse, and the hawk that travelled with him despite all.  There were wounds still on his wrists and chest and neck that had stayed through the change – he must have been sorely hurt.  But from whom the rescue?

He took them away, as far and fast as he could travel through the woods.  A morning, and another morning, more pools with cowslips peeping out under the leaves of the banks, always eastward.  No stranger there, nor message.  On the third morning he plucked a cluster of cowslips that had dried on its bush and kissed the golden blooms, then tucked them into the silk dress he saved for his lady.  The Key Flower.  His love was clever and strong and fast, and he did not deserve her.

The next day he found a stand of foxglove that had clawed its way into the crevices of a broken down stone wall, lost in the woods.  With a knife he cut a long stem, his mouth tight.  He took off his gloves and traced his thumb against the downy green-grey leaves, the vivid purple bells - one lost bee trapped beneath the leaves stung him before escaping, and he cursed.  With the setting sun searing into his eyes, he laid it in the saddle bag reserved for Isabeau.

Kill or cure, it was time to batter down the doors of heaven.

In the morning, the foxglove was gone, replaced by a bough of green holly, the berries that had been so red in midwinter withered and dry.  Etienne turned his horse to Italy.

***

In the high mountains of Aquila, amid the grey stone and the pale cream of the jagged rocks and shambling castles, he knelt on the wide plain listening to thunder break the sky.  _Say your prayers if you can bear to_ , the scholar had said.  His sword would make a fine cross but he could not, would not, ask a favour of the crucified one.  He folded in his middle, too weary to keep the straightness of a soldier.  “Please,” he said to his wolf-self.  They would need to travel far and fast in the night to be of service to their love.  The human would need to rise ascendant at the first break of day, no time for the wolf in him to linger into the light.  “ _Please_.”

***

And the bells rang, and he dreamed that Isabeau was dead.

And the bells rang, and he dreamed that Tiberius had killed her.

His eyes opened wide.  The bells of Aquila were ringing, and he lay on a straw tick in a high room far from the earth.  He rubbed his face and sat up, revelling in the feel of his calloused hands against his skin, and the softness of the furs beneath him.  All around him was sharp and clear; he lacked the headache and the fog and the bone deep weariness with which he normally greeted the day.  Someone had left him a bowl of fresh water and he washed his face, smiling at his reflection dimly seen through the dandelions floating on the surface.  He had dreamed that at the last Isabeau was saved, and in the golden sun of a warm day he thought he could carry that friendly lie for an hour.

Etienne dressed in his softer clothes today, a cream tunic which bore no readiness for war.  He scooped up a dandelion and kissed it, then climbed the ladder into the blessed light.  A girl was there, perched on the highest battlement, a woman with alabaster skin and eyes as soft and fierce as a bird’s, even more beautiful for the faint lines of hardship that creased the corners of her eyes and mouth.  Her face was greedy as she gazed eastwards, and he leaned against the wall near her, diffidently rubbing the dandelion head with his thumb.

The girl laughed in exultation and turned to him.  “You know,” Etienne said shyly, “I met a boy once who told me he dreamed of the most beautiful woman in the world, mysterious as the moon.  I asked him her name, so that if she appeared in _my_ dream, I might pretend we had met before.”

She laughed and clasped his head to bring him close and traced her hands over the lineaments of his face.  He smiled at the callouses that matched his and kissed her palm.  “I am Isabeau,” she said.  “Your own Isabeau.”

**Author's Note:**

> “She ruffled her feathers and chuffled slightly” – according to IMDB, one of the stunt hawks brought in for the movie liked Rutger Hauer so much that every time she rested on his arm she’d ruffle her feathers until she looked like a chicken, and couldn’t be used for filming.
> 
> Flower symbology in the Middle Ages:  
> -Snowdrops are hope and new beginnings  
> -Daffodils are new beginnings, rebirth and the coming of spring  
> -Daisies are literally “day’s eyes” and symbolise purity, innocence, loyal love, beauty, patience and simplicity  
> -Yarrow is a medicinal herb from way back when (literally back to Neanderthal burial sites) and associated with protection, healing battle wounds, and love.  
> -Dragon’s teeth aka Tetragonolobus maritimus. I’m just going off the name and the fact that it grows in Brittany on this one  
> -Yew trees are associated with eternal life, but also with death (they’re common in churchyards and are _really_ poisonous. Like in Caesar’s _Gallic Wars_ there’s a bit where saying someone killed himself ab taxo “by means of yew” is sufficient to explain cause of death.)  
>  -Cowslips look a little bit like a bunch of keys (if you squint), and have a story about St Peter being distracted from guarding the door of heaven by some scoundrels trying to sneak in and he dropped his keys, hence their meaning of the Gates of Heaven, or alternatively Our Lady’s Keys and Mary ascending to heaven. Phillipe would probably have liked them.  
> -Foxglove is now used as the source of digitalis, which makes great heart medicine. On the other hand, the plant is basically very poisonous.  
> -Holly is a symbol of Christ’s Passion, both as a reference to the crown of thorns, and also because it’s evergreen in winter and the red berries make people think of blood. One of my reference also suggested “aggression” and “defensiveness” as meanings dating from Roman times, as well as the devil being close by.  
> -And finally, the dandelion (‘lion’s tooth”), which has a host of meanings, including healing, wish fulfilment, overcoming adversity and, of course, the warmth and power of the rising sun.  
>   
> Condottieri – Italian warfare of the period ran on mercenary armies who were too smart (and careful of their skins) to engage in battles to the death unless they really had to. They were very big on developing military science and being strategic about the use of force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottieri 
> 
> The University of Paris (aka The Sorbonne) was chartered in 1200 and was known for its strength in the humanities, especially theology and philosophy. I figure Navarre might have gone there for help first, especially to a college founded by his very own Queen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Navarre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris 
> 
> Friar Guillem of the Dominicans is a made up personage. I needed a representative of the Inquisition to be cruel to Navarre for story reasons, and the Dominican Order was involved in this period. Nothing personal is intended.
> 
> The different sources disagree about how literate non-Church people (and especially women) might have been in the Middle Ages, from not very much to quite a lot – and complicated by the fact that ‘literate’ in Medieval terms meant ‘could read Latin’. On the other hand, Ladyhawke is set after the (a?) plague, which implies it’s in the latter half of the 14th century when books were getting a lot cheaper - paper mills were coming on line in Europe, and Italy in particular was known for high literacy rates. Which runs against the premise of my story, which is that Navarre and Isabeau aren’t able to trade letters, so my head canon is that Isabeau as a noblewoman could probably read, at least in the vernacular, but Navarre was a soldier and a damn Spaniard at that, and possibly couldn’t (or not much). In any case, paper and parchment for love notes would be hard to come by in their nomadic life.  
>   
> Although I have to say, I think a large part of the charm of this movie is Rutger Hauer’s portrayal as a hard man; a bruiser who takes no shit from anybody, and probably worked his way up through the ranks by being the toughest dog around – except when he talks about his girlfriend and goes utterly _soppy_.


End file.
